[Celinux-dev] How to protect intellectual property while
maximizing open source usage?
Scott E. Preece
preece at motorola.com
Thu Sep 7 05:54:59 PDT 2006
Thanks, Shawn,
One thing to be aware of is that in many companies the legal department
strongly discourages the engineering staff from discussing licensing
issues, because those discussions could then be brought up if anyone
ever sued. Then the lawyers can say "Well, look, person X said this,
which means the company was aware of it, and person Y said this, which
suggests you were deliberately trying to avoid the license terms."
I don't particularly like this, and periodically express opinions,
anyway, but it may make it difficult to have an open discussion.
The OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative has been trying to get work started on
a document that would talk about regulatory issues in using Linux in
phones. I think this would have some interesting interactions with
general licensing questions, but so far they haven't been able to get
it started.
I wonder whether a licensing guide for engineers might be a useful CELF
product...
scott
| Hi Scott,
|
|
|
| As I mentioned in my previous email, all of the comments are my
|
| personal opinion, not my employer.
|
|
|
| Of course no one will want to be a test case for this.
|
| I gradually got to know that companies not only want to keep their
| intellectual property
|
| but also want to avoid to infringe someone else¡¯ intellectual property too
|
| because both will be bad of course and I do not want to be a test case
| either. :-)
|
|
|
| Maybe my initial email looks like I want to make some trick against the
| spirit of the community
|
| but it is not. What I think a problem is that there are so many
| misunderstandings about
|
| the usage of F/OSS code into the proprietary product and it is unlikely to
| decrease.
|
| I worry this kind of misunderstanding is only getting bigger and will keep
| increasing with GPLv3
|
| and this will not be good to anyone.
|
|
|
| Anyway, thank you very much for your comment.
|
|
|
| /Shawn
|
|
|
|
|
| _____
|
| From: Preece Scott-PREECE [mailto:scott.preece at motorola.com]
| Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 11:03 PM
| To: Shawn Kwon; celinux-dev at tree.celinuxforum.org
| Subject: RE: [Celinux-dev] How to protect intellectual property while
| maximizing open source usage?
|
|
|
| Hi, Shawn,
|
|
|
| (1) On kernel modules, several other people have said pretty sensible
| things, including pointing to the Greg KH presentation, which is definitely
| what the mainstream kernel community believes the rules are.
|
|
|
| Of course, Greg's not a lawyer, and the question of whether kernel modules
| are derivative works has never been addressed in court. It's not clear what
| the answer would be. If you go that way, you risk being a test case. I
| agree that it might be difficult to find someone who had standing to sue
| you - it would probably have to be someone who held copyright on the
| specific interfaces you used, not just anyone with code in the kernel. And
| interfaces might be judged to be functional, rather than expressive, and
| not covered by copyright whether they're marked as "GPL-only" or not.
|
|
|
| On the other hand, do you really want to be a test case and have the
| community look on your company as one that tries to break the rules and
| operates outside the spirit of the community?
|
|
|
| (2) The only acceptable way to differentiate is to move your special stuff
| outside the kernel - either move it to user space or move it out to another
| component that communicates with the kernel. Note that you still may be in
| the scope of the GPL in the latter case, because the GPL requires that you
| use the GPL for anything that is packaged with the kernel and is designed
| to work closely with it. You would need to use some kind of really generic
| communication mechanism. If your code could be made to work, unchanged,
| with some other OS, that would be a good argument against a claim that it
| was a derivative work.
|
|
|
| Moving to user space, however, is probably safe regardless. I think there's
| a reasonably strong agreement that stuff running in user space doesn't need
| to be GPL. However, even there you could get into trouble if you modified
| the kernel to open up a faster/quicker pipe between the kernel and user
| space. You're really safe only as long as you stick to the standard syscall
| interfaces; even sysfs interfaces are arguably too intimate with the kernel
| to provide the necessary isolation.
|
|
|
| Running wholly outside Linux, however, is probably safe. If you have a
| separate processor, or if you're running on a microkernel that Linux also
| runs on (that is, if you've done virtualization outside Linux, rather than
| inside it), that external stuff is pretty clearly separate from Linux and
| GPL issues.
|
|
|
| (3) If the library is GPLed, and you intend to release your product as a
| whole (already linked), you're basically stuck with releasing your code as
| GPL. If you're releasing unlinked object code to be linked with a dynamic
| library, you might get away with it if the library happens to implement a
| standard API, but if you linked against header files provided by the GPLed
| library, which you would probably have to, then you're stuck with releasing
| your code under GPL.
|
|
|
| My best advice is to not try to work around the rules. The whole point of
| community development is that sharing the IP allows the whole to improve
| much faster than any one participant could. By exposing your source code,
| you allow others to build on it - to improve it and find problems in it.
| The kernel community considers that open interaction to be the cost of
| using the work that the other members have done in producing the kernel.
|
|
|
| Note that IANAL and the opinions here are my own and do not represent my
| employer.
|
|
|
| Regards,
|
| scott
|
|
|
|
| _____
|
|
| From: celinux-dev-bounces at tree.celinuxforum.org [mailto:celinux-dev-
| bounces at tree.celinuxforum.org] On Behalf Of Shawn Kwon
| Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 10:09 PM
| To: celinux-dev at tree.celinuxforum.org
| Subject: [Celinux-dev] How to protect intellectual property while
| maximizing open source usage?
|
| How to protect intellectual property while maximizing open source usage?
|
|
|
| Well, this topic is not a new one but it is an important part when
| developing a product.
|
|
|
| To ease the discussion, here are brief question-style arguments.
|
|
|
| 1. Should linux kernel module be released under GPL? (Simple question. :-))
|
|
|
| 2. If the kernel module should be GPL, then how can I differentiate the
| operating system-related part of my product?
|
|
|
| 3. How can I legally develop my application using GPL¡¯d library with
| keeping my application code proprietary?
|
|
|
| I hope many people can share their views and experiences. I will post my
| opinion also soon.
|
|
|
| /Shawn
|
|
| --Boundary_(ID_i3CSF5/UwD40monCt3B/0g)
----------
--
scott preece
motorola mobile devices, il67, 1800 s. oak st., champaign, il 61820
e-mail: preece at motorola.com fax: +1-217-384-8550
phone: +1-217-384-8589 cell: +1-217-433-6114 pager: 2174336114 at vtext.com
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